for the lazy baker: cranberry & pistachio chocolate bark.

when i first began what has become the tradition of baking holiday treats, i stuck to a tried and tested recipe for sugar cookies decorated with royal icing. i would get together with my girlfriends cassie & neena, and we would bake and decorate hundreds of cookies in the days leading up to christmas. they were delicious, pretty and fun to make, but somewhere along the line, i must have sustained a serious head injury, as i have since started adding a new item to my list of holiday baking as each year passes. for the past two years, we have switched up the sugar cookies to butter cookies (which are still full of sugar by the way), and added peanut butter balls and rolo turtles to the list. so why should this year be any different? variety is the spice bastard of life right? so i tacked on this recipe for cranberry pistachio bark and called it a day.

this special treat adds a fruity, nutty element to the baking i am already committed to, and adds some colour and texture to the tins and packages i will be making up to hand out. it looks equally pretty when served on a platter or wrapped as a small gift with cello, greens and a handmade ornament. with less than a week left until christmas, this treat is the easiest way to pull something together that takes less than 20 minutes to make but looks like much more work than that. no one needs to know you could whip this shit up blindfolded with your hands tied behind your back and high on bath salts. if that's the kind of thing you're into.